A.R.E. Blog

Why Horrible Things Happen In Certain Locations
by Tina D. Erwin

One of Edgar Cayce’s most repeated references is to karma, “that first rule, a law that is eternal: The seed sown must one day be reaped.” (Reading 2448-2) Literally, negativity begets negativity as the case below chillingly illustrates.

On a hot, sticky night on June 10, 1912, in the quiet little town of Villisca, Iowa, a powerful evil wind blew into the home of the Moore family and became manifest. On that fateful night, a rather tall person or persons, wielding an ax, murdered all six family members in their beds. Two young neighbors, spending the night with the Moore family girls, the Stillinger sisters, were also murdered in the front bedroom. The news of these premeditated murders, rocked the teeny, tiny town. No one was ever found guilty of the crime although someone was unsuccessfully tried for it. To this day, no one lives in the old house because no one is ever very comfortable there even though it has had several owners since that tragic night a hundred years ago in 1910.

One of the questions that people often asked was why did such vicious, raw violence happen in that house? While on the surface, there did appear to have been a revenge motive for the killings (something about a shady business deal), the raw violence of the obviously, premeditated massacre of women and children that occurred in that house on that night would seem to go way beyond mere business revenge.

This begs the question: Is it possible that there could be something about the land that could have incited such action? Was there a history of violence on the property, long before the Moore family bought the house? Was there something in the karmic history of the slaughtered individuals that put them in resonance with such horror? Let us peek into the past.

A very long time ago, before this country was settled, the Fox Indian tribe controlled that part of Iowa, and they called it Willisca, which was a lovely place although not the part of town where the massacre house now sits. The specific area of town where the massacre house now sits was the exact location where the Fox and Sioux Indians sent their criminally insane family members. They put them there because they believed that the ground was very negative.

Eventually, by the time the Lewis and Clark Expedition explored the territory, the Iowan Indians had control of the area. The Iowan Indians changed the name from Willisca to Villisca. What is in a name? To the Fox and Sioux Indians, the word Villisca means evil place, the place of devil spirits. Apparently, the change in name was not a good sign for the town and that piece of property in particular.

But here again, what made the property, or that area, negative in the first place? Perhaps the answer to this takes us back to understanding the energy of an area. The Native American peoples always studied where animals felt safe, how trees grew, and what plants grew well in which places. They knew instinctively that poisonous plants and plants with destructive growths, stinging insects, and misshapen plant life, were the result of negative places. They could see the evidence. Only creatures and plants in resonance with that energy would grow there.

Only creatures and plants in resonance with that energy would grow there. This brings up the resonance issue. The Indians avoided that location because they knew that staying there would eventually make them physically and spiritually sick. They would not keep their horses there either for that type of land was harmful to all healthy creatures. The Fox and Sioux Indians only took their insane people there because they believed that insane people were already in a physically and emotionally negative place.

So if someone is insane, possibly criminally insane, and he or she lives in that type of environment, the energy of that land would be continually imbued with that increasingly negative energy. No normally healthy person or animal would ever want to spend time there because they wouldn’t feel comfortable. Perhaps the criminally insane were more comfortable, more controllable on property in which they were in resonance.

Back to the Villisca murders: Why did that family pick that house to live in? Why did those children pick that family to have that experience, and why did the Stillinger sisters go to that negative house on that specific night? Does this mean that these eight seemingly innocent people were on some level and in some karmic way in resonance with profound evil? Is this why they couldn’t feel the level of evil in the ground before they bought the property and moved in, nor the Stillinger sisters, who visited that house?

Native peoples felt the earth beneath their feet. They learned the language of the earth and communicated with nature on the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual level. Few white men learned those precious lessons. Because of these facts, it would appear that the Moore family might not have been conscious of how negative the property was. They may not have been taught to heed that sense that tells them that something is very, very wrong. But if they were already in resonance with darkness on some level, they may never have felt the evil in the first place. They may not have realized that they were literally in resonance with profound evil. Maybe they were very angry about the business deal, or were angry at each other. Maybe something dark was haunting them and that feeling became their norm. We will never know what happened.

Perhaps the most critical aspect is the karmic aspect. Karma is always fair, always just. When people die together, even in a ferociously violent way, this is group karma. Even though an observer may not be able to fathom why the vicious death of six seemingly innocent children could happen, we do not know the karmic path of any of those murdered souls. We cannot know why they had such a traumatic experience nor how each of those souls will use that experience to balance something on their karmic path in the future. The curious aspect that no one was ever found guilty of the crime may have something to do with how the karma was balanced, for no other murders of that type took place any where near that town or in the town of Villisca, and no one has ever really “lived a normal life” in that house again.

Perhaps one of the lessons of the Villisca Ax murders would be to absolutely listen to that psychic sense that tells you that something doesn’t feel right about a location. Remove anger from your life and research the history of a location before you purchase, rent, or work in an area!

We attract what we are and what we think, and if what we are attracting is negative, then we must change our thoughts and our life. Only each one of us can make that karmically life-changing decision for ourselves.

TINA D. ERWIN, CDR, USN, Ret. has studied metaphysics all her life to enable her to
understand her own psychic abilities. These intense studies were further enhanced by the
experiences of a dynamic 20-year career in the Navy, working for the U.S. Submarine Force,
retiring at the Commander level. Erwin is the author of the A.R.E. Press book, The Lightworker’s Guide to Healing Grief.

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